The Google Payday Loan Update 2.0 was a new and improved generation of the “Google Payday Loan Update” which was first introduced to the US-American search market on June 11th 2013 and then rolled out worldwide over the course of the following month or two.
The Payday Loan Update 2.0 was rolled out worldwide on the weekend of May the 17th or 18th, 2014 and affected about 0.2% of all English language search requests. It is quite possible that the Update has a much more noticeable impact on other language versions than for English search requests.
What is so special about the Payday Loan Update 2.0?
The Payday Loan Update 2.0 is not a Data Refresh of the algorithm change “Payday Loan Update”, but a comprehensive algorithm change by Google, as the underlying technology for recognising webspam- and illegal SEO-methods has been improved quite a bit.
At the same time, Google uses this algorithm change to specifically hone in on search requests with a lot of spam, such as for the topics of loans, pornography, gambling and drugs, as well as prescription medicine.
Both of the Payday Loan Updates have nothing to do with other algorithm changes, like the Panda Update or the Penguin Update.
What is the difference between the Payday Loan Update 2.0 and the Penguin Update 2.0?
Both Google Updates follow the same goal of increasing the quality of the search results but use entirely different methods to achieve this goal.
The Penguin Update 2.0 tries to use algorithmic methods to figure out if a website’s backlink profile is either unnatural, or manipulated through the use of purchased links, and then proceeds to punish the entire website. In order to prevent being targeted by this update, every webmaster should evaluate their website for an unnatural backlink profile and use the SISTRIX LinkRating to get an automatic risk evaluation of their backlinks.
The Payday Loan Update 2.0 does not directly focus on links that have been bought or sold through “classic” link building, but punishes websites that are trying to manipulate their rankings through illegal SEO tactics. When referring to “illegal SEO tactics”, also called BlackHat-methods, Google explicitly refers to links that are created by hacking other websites or infesting them with malware.
Matt Cutts explained this Payday Loan Update goes after unique link schemes, many of which are illegal. He also added this is a world-wide update and is not just being rolled out in the U.S. but being rolled out globally.
– Quoted from an interview with Matt Cutts
Video explanation by Matt Cutts / Google on this topic
Matt Cutts talks about Pure spam
Matt Cutts explains what it means if your site has a manual action labelled as “Pure spam” and what you can do to fix it.
Additional information on this topic:
- Video-Explanation: Matt Cutts about malware and hacked pages
